Don Lemon on Confederate Namesakes: Would You Want Your Kids Playing in ‘Bin Laden Park?’

CNN host Don Lemon on Friday criticized President Trump’s opposition to renaming military bases named for Confederate leaders, saying the president is “missing the moment, and at the very least tone deaf.”

“There are even staunch conservatives who understand that it is time to get rid of the Confederate flag in our culture. It is time to rename some military installations,” Lemon said, adding that the flag and Confederate monuments signify a strain of “anti-Americanism.”

“Would you want to go to a ‘Hitler high school?'” Lemon asked. “Would you want to go have your kids play in ‘Bin Laden park?’ If you were a black military member…would you like to have served at ‘Fort Benedict Arnold?’”

Lemon’s comments followed a clip of former Department of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson on CNN on Thursday in which he said that the Confederate flag represented that his great-great-grandmother, who was born into slavery, “should have remained a slave for the rest of her life.”

“The symbols [Trump] is fighting for are for losers,” Lemon continued, “and for people who were traitors to this country.”

Trump claimed on Twitter recently that the removal of statues and the renaming of military bases would amount to a denial of history.

Watch the video above, via CNN.